Crafty Love n Hugs

Saturday, 3 December 2016

For the past week over on the fabulous PaperArtsy Blog there has been lots of inspiration and wonderful projects for Topic #23 - Bleach techniques which was introduced brilliantly as always by Darcy HERE.

I love the effects you can get using bleach on paper, card, inks, etc., and have tried out various different combinations in the past. I even have a pad which has some sort of product that removes colour that you can use as an 'ink' pad for stamps. In all the attempts I made I have found the results to be extremely varied. With some card and also inks bleach barely works at all and often when it does work it leaves a totally unexpected colour behind. Some of these are lovely and some not so, lol! I also like 'painting' with bleach if I get the right combination of card or ink On this occasion I wanted to use stamps and stencils to remove colour from dye ink backgrounds on matte coated cardstock and I did a few experiments using bleach but found that a faux bleach technique using water was more successful. If you hop over to the PaperArtsy Blog you can see my step by steps on how I created two Christmas cards using mainly Sarah Naumann stamps, sneak peeks of which you can see below.

Tuesday, 15 November 2016

.....it's the first of November's Quick Cards posts over on the Chocolate Baroque DT Blog!

Morning All,

I completely forgot I had a couple of quick and very easy cards oveer on the CB blog today. As we have Christmas getting ever closer and this year I am even more behind with my preparations than usual due to my slow op recovery putting a major spanner in the works, quick Christmas cards always come in handy and Chocolate Baroque have some stunning Christmas stamps suitable for every style. Just hop over to their website and enter 'Christmas stamps' in the search bar....gorgeous!

Anyway, for my first card I simply stamped the beautiful tree onto a
diecut shape, embossed with sparkly embossing powder then coloured in
with some water based metallic paints. I dusted around the tree using Pine Needles Distress Ink. After sticking the image to the
card base with double sided tape I stamped and embossed the sentiment and used the same but
smaller dieshape to cut it out before adding it to the card using 3D
foam along with some ribbon.

My second card was even quicker! I stamped the image onto the diecut shape using Vintage Photo Distress Ink and pulled in some of the colour with a water brush. I then added a little grey watercolour shading around the image, edged with Vintage Photo and stuck it to the card base with 3D foam. I then stamped the sentiment at the bottom, risking all if it had gone wonky, lol!

Do pop over to the Chocolate Baroque DT blog as there is loads of fabulous inspiration from the team members if you need a card or two in a hurry.

Friday, 11 November 2016

I was up even earlier than normal this morning so went more or less straight into my craftroom for a play. I seem to be on a roll at the moment and am really enjoying being creative with relatively simple techniques instead of trying to be clever with loads of different products. It's amazing what you can achieve with inks or paints and some beautiful stamps.

This morning's offering has turned out rather grungy in contrast to yesterday's card and I've inked up some fairly 'new to me' stamps from Dina Wakley and Tim Holtz together with several stamps from one fab PaperArtsy Hot Picks set which was released last year.

I already had the piece of card covered with blended Distress Inks and some light spritzing with water to take some colour off and I just did some simple layering of stamps with various Archival Inks. I started with the brilliant script stamp from the Hot Picks set and Coffee Archival. This stamp is huuuggge and made up of a collage of different scripts, some going horizontally and some vertically. It makes for a fab beautifully detailed background with one easy stamping!

I then simply added the other images on top, inked around the edges and stamped the Dina W quote onto Kraft card before cutting it out and adhering to the tag.

This tag has loads of script on it so it's my third entry to the current fab challenge over on the PaperArtsy Blog. The inspiration from the guest designers has been stunning over the past week and a half and it's not over till Sunday! I wonder if I'll manage another entry before the deadline, lol!

Thursday, 10 November 2016

...............this time with JOFY latest release stamps for PaperArtsy!

Hi Everyone,

We have a very mixed bag of weather here today, one minute bright sunshine and blue sky and the next, as it is now, dark enough to need the lights on and raining! Whatever it's doing though it's a tad chilly, lol, so perfect for spending some of the morning in my craftroom finishing off a card I began last night.

I started with the rest of a scrap piece that I had used in my last post as my background and stamped the images bottom right with Black Archival ink. I made up the clusters of little 'bubble' flowers using a couple of the small stamps on the JOFY set and I also stamped the leaf 3 times together with the flower head onto PA lighter weight Smoothy card. I painted all the images with Fresco Finish Acrylic Paints and added a few white highlights. I also went over the shading marks of the stamps with a black Pitt Pen to freshen them up after painting the images.

I mounted the piece onto coordinating card, then again onto a Kraft card base then I adhered the leaves and the flower head with Matte Medium. I stamped the words from an older JOFY set (I use these words a lot as you can mix them up to make different greetings) onto the last little piece of the background I had left, cut them out and stuck them on with 3D foam to finish the card.

Another nice bit of playtime this week and another card for my standby box. Confession time.......I really should be making Chistmas cards but I think I am living in denial that it's only a little over 6 weeks to The Day, eeek! I haven't bought a single pressie yet either and think I need to get my act together, lol!

Sunday, 6 November 2016

After a very noisy Saturday evening (dratted fireworks which went on for almost 8 hours!) it's a beautiful peaceful, sunny Sunday morning here. I suspect we will have another noisy evening tonight with our Snoopy barking constantly but hopefully not for as long.

Yesterday I had a little play with a mash up of stamps from Elena Zinski, PaperArtsy's newest designer and a JOFY favourite to create a fun 'Christmassy' tag.

I started out with a piece of copy paper I had dabbed left over Fresco Finish paints on from a sponge.

I ran some Snowflake Fresco over it with a brayer to knock the colours back and covered a tag with the paper.

I stamped all the images with Black Archival ink making an alternative Christmas tree from one of JOFY's dandelion style flowers and the pot from one of her real Christmas tree stamps. I also stamped Elena's cute little monster again onto card. The one stamped directly onto the tag I made a little Christmassy by turning her hat into a Santa hat and adding pompoms using one of the small stamps from the set.

I coloured all the images with Derwent Coloursoft pencils, cut out the body and head of the little monster and stuck it onto the tag. Next I blinged it up a little with some Stickles to the tree, stars and the white bits on the hat. I think you will see the sparkle if you click on the pics.

Finally I mounted the tag onto co-ordinating card and added the ribbon.

EDIT - As my friends are pointing out this does look more like a tag for the current topic here in the UK, ie Bonfire Night fireworks, lol!

Wednesday, 2 November 2016

What a gorgeous morning we have here in Notts! Fabulous bright blue sky and brilliant sunshine albeit with a slightly chilly wind but much better than the grey and drizzle we had yesterday.

I really love the current PaperArtsy Blog Challenge topic of Typography, Fonts and Quotes and I have made a second entry.. Already there has been a lovely project Pavla Hozikova and of course, the inspirational intro from Darcy. Unusually for me this entry is a journal page in my 'Sam's Journal' (so called because it was a gift from my friend). I'm not very good at this journalling lark but do try to swipe left over paints and inks from other projects onto pages (when I remember) and then have a go at a later date.

This started off weeks ago as random brayering of leftover Fresco Finish paints in Nougat, Blush, Rose and Taupe and I'd stamped in Coffee Archival ink with a PA script stamp.

I then just started adding layers of stencilling, stamping and some left over diecuts.

I've used Fresco Finish paints and Archival Inks for stamping and stencilling.

I also stamped some circles with a Colourbox white pigment ink and clear embossed it. There's a bit of white pen inside the diecut 'holes' and a little Treasure Gold here and there.

Finally I stamped the quote onto card, cut it up, roughed up the edges and inked them before sticking them to my page and adding a bit of graphite pencil round the pieces.

Everything I used on this page is from PaperArtsy!

As I said I don't really know what I'm doing with journalling but I enjoyed the play and although many would probably think the colours are rather dull they are right up my street, lol!

I might be back with some more entries before the two weeks are up on this challenge, lol! Have a good day everyone.

Monday, 31 October 2016

..... on what is apparently quite a foggy Monday morning in some areas of the UK. Here in my little bit of Nottinghamshire we have a pretty pearly sky and it looks as though we could have a pleasant day ahead.

The fab new topic of Typography, Fonts and Quotes which started on the PaperArtsy Blog Challenge last night is one I love, especially quotes. As always the intro to the topic from Darcy is interesting, informative and full of wonderful inspiration so do hop over for a looksee. It's is very rare I make something that doesn't have some form of script/wording on it so I'm hoping I have lots of time to play this next two weeks.

I have a simple tag to share this morning which I already had out on my desk having hoped to make another quick entry to the previous topic but it didn't get done so I changed plans to the new topic.

A few days ago I rediscovered some tags which my friend Judith shared several years ago now and which had been stained with coffee or tea and I used one for this piece. It actually still has a lovely faint aroma of coffee after all this time ;-)! I started by blending some Vintage Photo Distress Ink around the edges and then stamped the beautiful delicate script stamp from one of Lin Brown's latest stamp sets using Potting Soil Archival Ink. It amazes me how a stamp so fine and detailed can stamp so clearly. Next I stamped the grass, another gorgeous stamp from the same set using Sienna Archival Ink.

I found a small Kraft tag, inked the edges with Vintage Photo then stamped the skeleton leaf from Lin's other new release with the same ink. I stamped the quote onto a piece of vellum several times with Sienna Archival and heat embossed with clear ep before cutting it into bits to give me the widest border around the words possible and stuck the bits on.

I really enjoyed this bit of spontaneous play and I'm off to link up to the challenge before getting stuck into the usual boring Monday chores, lol!

CVC Top Three

Whoohoo! I made Top Three twice on the CB Challenge.

I am proud to be a former member of ..........

CRAFT STAMPING QUARTET

Through my membership of the Graphicus Guild I have met 3 lovely friends, Jo, Judith and Elaine. As we are scattered over the UK we don't get together very often so we started our joint blog as a way to 'craft together' in the virtual world.

Why not pay our blog a visit and see what challenges we have set ourselves and read bits about the occasional real life get togethers we manage to organise.

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craftymammalovenhugs

About Me

I am a 60 something Wife, Mum (1 lovely Son and 1 beautiful Daughter) and Mamma to 4 gorgeous Grandchildren (Izzy, Alexa, Charlie and Seth). I started my blog to record my crafty makes and at that time never dreamed I would be lucky enough to be part of some wonderful design teams. Occasionally I will share bits about my family, especially my Grandchildren so feel free to skip those bits if you are not into doting Mamma talk, lol!